Publications
Publications
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- Faculty Publications (1,484)
- January 2019 (Revised December 2019)
- Case
CrossBoundary Energy
By: John Macomber
Almost 500 million people are without electricity in sub-Saharan Africa. Governments and public utilities are challenged to bring generation and distribution to most of them. Considerable promise exists in “off-grid” or “mini-grid” technologies, notably using renewable... View Details
Keywords: Energy Investing; Economic Development; Renewable Energy; Business Growth and Maturation; Developing Countries and Economies; Project Finance; Emerging Markets; Industry Structures; Infrastructure; Segmentation; Private Equity; Decision Choices and Conditions; Energy Industry; Utilities Industry; Africa; Tanzania; Ghana
- 22 Jan 2019
- Interview
Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace
By: Amy C. Edmondson and Curt Nickisch
Amy Edmondson, professor at Harvard Business School, first identified the concept of psychological safety in work teams in 1999. Since then, she has observed how companies with a trusting workplace perform better. Psychological safety isn’t about being nice, she says.... View Details
- January 15, 2019
- Article
Is Your Company's Strategy Aligned with Your Ownership Model?
By: Josh Baron
The legacy of Vanguard founder John Bogle has brought attention to the transformative influence of ownership structures within the business world. Bogle's revolutionary insight into the limitations of active fund management led to the widespread adoption of index... View Details
- January 2019
- Article
Making Moves Matter: Experimental Evidence on Incentivizing Bureaucrats Through Performance-Based Postings
By: Adnan Q. Khan, Asim Ijaz Khwaja and Benjamin A. Olken
Bureaucracies often post staff to better or worse locations, ostensibly to provide incentives. Yet we know little about whether this works, with heterogeneity in preferences over postings impacting effectiveness. We propose a performance-ranked serial dictatorship... View Details
- December 2018 (Revised August 2022)
- Teaching Note
Revenue Recognition at HBP
By: Siko Sikochi and Paul Healy
In early 2014, Corporate Learning, one of three business units at Harvard Business Publishing (HBP), was in the process of revamping its flagship product, Harvard Manage-Mentor (HMM) from version 11.0 (HMM11) to version 12.0 (HMM12). The revamped software would be... View Details
- December 2018
- Case
Corporate Transformation at Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany
By: Joseph B. Fuller, Amy C. Edmondson, Daniela Beyersdorfer and Tonia Labruyere
When Stefan Oschmann became CEO and chairman of the executive board of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, in 2016, the company had started its transformation from a mid-tier traditional German industry player to a global modern science and technology player. The... View Details
- December 2018 (Revised December 2019)
- Case
Commonwealth Joe Coffee Roasters
By: Alexander MacKay and Ramon Casadesus-Masanell
At the end of 2016, the leadership team of Commonwealth Joe Coffee Roasters—Robert Peck, Chase Damiano, and Jeremy Martin—had begun an ambitious retail expansion strategy in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area for their specialty coffee business. That October, they... View Details
- December 2018
- Case
Bata versus Relaxo—Analyzing Performance
By: Suraj Srinivasan, Iris Leung and Quinn Pitcher
Set in 2016, “Bata India versus Relaxo—Analyzing Performance” compares the strategies and financial performance of two Indian footwear companies. Bata India had long been the market leader in footwear in India, but its leading market position was being challenged by... View Details
- November 2018 (Revised July 2023)
- Case
The Weir Group: Reforming Executive Pay (A)
By: Lynn S. Paine and Federica Gabrieli
In February 2018, the Remuneration Committee together with the full Board of Directors of the Scotland-based engineering company The Weir Group had to decide whether to seek a shareholder vote at the upcoming Annual General Meeting in April on a proposal to reform the... View Details
Keywords: General Management; Board Of Directors; Executive Committees; Human Resource Management; Compensation; Pay For Performance; Incentives; Bonuses; Incentive Programs; Employee Stock Ownership Plans; Performance Measurement; Corporate Governance; Governing and Advisory Boards; Human Resources; Management; Executive Compensation; Change; Performance Evaluation; Employee Stock Ownership Plan; Europe; United Kingdom; Scotland
- Article
Operational Efficiency and Effective Management in the Catheterization Laboratory
By: Grant W. Reed, Michael L. Tushman and Samir R. Kapadia
Operational efficiency is a core business principle in which organizations strive to deliver high-quality goods or services in a cost-effective manner. This concept has become increasingly relevant to cardiac catheterization laboratories, as insurers move away from... View Details
- October 2018
- Article
Competing with Complementors: An Empirical Look at Amazon.com
By: Feng Zhu and Qihong Liu
Platform owners sometimes enter complementors' product spaces to compete against them directly. Prior studies have offered two possible explanations for such entries: platform owners may target the most successful complementors so as to appropriate value from their... View Details
- October 2018
- Article
The Operational Value of Social Media Information
By: Ruomeng Cui, Santiago Gallino, Antonio Moreno and Dennis J. Zhang
While the value of using social media information has been established in multiple business contexts, the field of operations and supply chain management have not yet explored the possibilities it offers in improving firms' operational decisions. This study attempts to... View Details
- September 2018 (Revised January 2019)
- Teaching Note
Gemini Investors
By: Richard S. Ruback, Royce Yudkoff and Ahron Rosenfeld
Teaching Note for HBS No. 211-066. Gemini Investors was a private equity firm that targeted equity investments of between $4 million to $6 million per firm. In the period from 2000 to 2015, Gemini had successfully deployed four funds, all licensed as Small Business... View Details
- September 2018
- Case
Clayton, Dubilier & Rice at 40
By: Josh Lerner, Abhijit Tagade and Terrence Shu
In 2018, private equity firm Clayton, Dubilier & Rice celebrated its 40th anniversary and its 20th year under the leadership of CEO Don Gogel. In those decades, CD&R showed solid portfolio performance and generated strong returns for its investors - accomplishments... View Details
- September 2018
- Case
The Financial Management of Harvard Business School
By: C. Fritz Foley and F. Katelynn Boland
In the spring of 2018, the Senior Associate Dean for Strategic Financial Planning at Harvard Business School considers potential refinements to the School's financial management practices. He faced questions about whether the metrics that had been used to evaluate... View Details
- August 2018
- Technical Note
Evaluating Start Ups
By: William A. Sahlman, Ramana Nanda and Robert F. White
A framework for assessing new business opportunities and the business plans used to describe them is developed. Useful for aspiring entrepreneurs in MBA programs. View Details
- August 2018 (Revised September 2018)
- Case
LendingClub (A): Data Analytic Thinking (Abridged)
By: Srikant M. Datar and Caitlin N. Bowler
LendingClub was founded in 2006 as an alternative, peer-to-peer lending model to connect individual borrowers to individual investor-lenders through an online platform. Since 2014 the company has worked with institutional investors at scale. While the company assigns... View Details
- August 2018 (Revised April 2019)
- Case
Fair Value Accounting at Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (A)
By: Jonas Heese, Suraj Srinivasan, Francois Brochet and Christine Johnson
In May 2018, Berkshire Hathaway announced an unprecedented loss of more than $1 billion for the first quarter of 2018. Warren Buffett blamed this loss on the new accounting rules for equity securities which he criticized. In the case ‘Fair Value Accounting at Berkshire... View Details
- August 2018
- Teaching Note
IguanaFix
By: Frank V. Cespedes and Thomas Eisenmann
Teaching Note for HBS No. 817-056. IguanaFix, based in Argentina, is a platform business that connects consumers with home improvement contractors. The founders are evaluating growth options and an investment offer. The case focuses on scaling issues for a venture... View Details
- August 2018 (Revised July 2019)
- Background Note
Conducting a Kaizen
By: Willy Shih
Kaizen, meaning change for the better in Japanese, is a set of activities directed at improving standardized work, equipment, and procedures for carrying out daily production or other business operations. It was popularized by Toyota as an integral part of its Toyota... View Details